Miami’s Traffic God Wonders Where All the Crazies Went

Yoandri, Miami’s universally detested god of traffic, looked
down upon South Florida from his home high on Mount Tropical Park, and sighed
dejectedly. On a whim, he raised the Brickell drawbridge. Nothing. He threw a
barricade across the Golden Interchange. Nothing. He jacked up the Palmetto
Express Lane toll to $85. Nothing. Utterly despondent, Yoandri sounded the
emergency broadcast system, flustering a flock of ibis strutting down US-1. The
birds regained their composure and resumed strutting. Yoandri sank deeper into
despair.

Things were not always so bleak for poor Yoandri. Just a few
weeks prior, the god of traffic levelled the full weight of his twisted genius
into making Miamians 10% more miserable than humanly possible. The logical infeasibility
of this feet did not remotely concern Yoandri. That was a problem for Miami’s
long-suffering god of math and, of course, for its residents.

Yoandri reveled in methodically shattering the psyche of
every driver braving Miami’s roads—throwing so much implausible idiocy at motorists
that they’d themselves turn into gibbering idiots. Those newly converted idiots
happened to be driving two-ton mobile steel killing machines, compounding local
insanity and spreading mayhem around the city at an exponential rate. This was
Yoandri’s preferred state.

The god’s favorite trick was to take an infuriating situation and simply pile a mind-flogging array of absurdity on top. For example, you might be traveling westward down SW 7th Street when another motorist going south on 4th Avenue suddenly decided to make an illegal left turn into oncoming traffic because the thrill grinding a major intersection to halt was the only thing that made her feel alive. You, along with a dozen other cars laid on your horns. The situation was bad enough, but then two Italian scooters carrying two Spanish men crashed into each other as they tried to skirt around the woman, blocking the other westbound lanes. They were fine, their scooters were fine, but their loud, hand-waving argument devolved into a loud, fist-throwing fight over La Liga.

A cop showed up, but rather than sorting things out, signaled
that you and the 50 other cars behind you needed to reverse two blocks to the
east because the Brazilian president’s executive secretary’s niece’s motorcade would
be driving by, and she didn’t like looking at the poors. Taking advantage of
the turmoil, a group of homeless persons gathered some local roosters into an impromptu
cock fight in the middle of the street. The originally offending woman, Spanish
men, cop, and Brazilian president’s secretary’s niece all stopped what they’re
doing to place bets. Just as your brain was ready to mutiny, jump out your ear,
and delegate your sentience and bodily functions to the liver, spleen, or any
other organ stupid enough to take the job, a helicopter landed on your hood.

Though ostensibly random acts of pure lunacy, these daily occurrences were carefully choreographed by Miami’s god of traffic to produce the highest entertainment value possible. Just like most TV viewers would jump at the chance to crossover Tiger King with Stranger Things, Rick & Morty, and Breaking Bad, Yoandri loved nothing more than to sit back and watch the citywide pandemonium unfold. Now he mostly just sat and sulked.

Miami’s drivers, his previously unwitting playthings, had suddenly disappeared. He checked their usual haunts—the Palmetto, Turnpike, Flagler, Alton, the Kendall Palacio de los Jugos parking lot—but they were nowhere to be found. He missed them terribly, and whiled away the time moping, pouting, and concocting fiendishly unpleasant scenarios for when they finally returned to the roads.